Healthcare consumers may be enrolled in one or more health insurance plans, such as medical insurance plans, dental insurance plans, prescription plans, or vision insurance plans. For example, various health insurance plans may be offered by a consumer's employer or by an employer of the consumer's spouse. Other health insurance plans may be available to individual consumers or self-employed individuals, or to members of a professional society or industry organization. Each of these health plans may have different health plan characteristics, including the conditions covered, the doctors participating in the plans, the premiums paid by an employer or the consumer, deductibles, co-payments, out-of-pocket yearly maximum expenses, lifetime maximum expenses, and other characteristics.
In addition to health insurance plans, healthcare consumers may be able to take advantage of various types of medical reimbursement accounts, according to applicable regulations. For example, a consumer may participate in a “cafeteria plan” that includes a flexible spending account (FSA). Pre-tax money may be set aside by an employer in the FSA and then distributed to the consumer as reimbursement for qualified medical expenses not paid by the consumers health insurance plan(s). If any money remains in the account after the end of a current health plan year (e.g., if there are not enough qualified expenses to recover the money set aside), the consumer may lose the remaining funds. In many cases the amount allocated to an FSA must be determined once for the upcoming year and may not be changed.
In order to try to estimate an optimum allocation for an FSA, consumers may sift through stacks of confusing documents to determine what their total healthcare-related expenses were for any given health insurance plan year, how much their health insurance plan paid, and how much they paid out-of-pocket. As healthcare costs continue to escalate, health insurance plan characteristics change and become more complex, and regulations regarding reimbursement accounts change, it may be difficult for a consumer to decide how much money to allocate to an FSA for an upcoming year.